This paper compares centralized and decentralized coordination when managers are privately informed and communicate strategically. We consider a multidivisional organization in which decisions must be adapted to local conditions but also coordinated with each other. Information about local...

Despite the reunification of Germany more than 15 years ago, substantial differences remain between the regions that once comprised the market-driven West and the socialist, centrally planned East. Although today’s Eastern German economy is less competitive than the Western German economy,...

During the past, the evaluation of the chances of economic transformation and development of Eastern Europe was largely shaped by the view on the modernization and organizational restructuring of large enterprises/combines. Various scholars were sceptical how far these could contribute to a...

Are location-specific factors--such as the education and attitude of the local workforce, supplier networks, institutional infrastructure, and local "culture"--important for understanding persistent heterogeneities among firms? We address this question in the context of the automobile industry....

It was the question of how best to balance the costs of ordering and of running out of stock against the costs of holding excess inventory that inspired Kenneth Arrow, Theodore Harris, and Jacob Marschak to introduce the (<em>S</em>, <em>s</em>) model in 1951. In this celebratory article, we show how this model...

The long-standing argument that focused operations outperform others stands in contrast to claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. The performance benefits of focus are typically attributed to reduced complexity, lower uncertainty, and the development of specialized expertise,...

Based on the framework of design-based comparative advantage, in which the dynamic fit between the organizational capabilities of manufacturing sites and the architectures of products and processes affects the competitiveness of the sites and industries, the paper describes and analyzes various...

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. Their average scores are below emerging countries such as Brazil, China and...

The study outlines the evolutionary character of the process of emerging and confirming the logistic approach in the firm management of the countries with developed market economies. It states the contiguous stages of its application in the context of the evolution of the logistic in the second...

Wie wird in KMU, die eine Reform ihrer betrieblichen Partizipationsstrukturen als Antwort auf die wirtschaftliche Strukturkrise planen, waehrend einer Akutkrise mit Blick auf diese Reform und auf die betriebliche Partizipation reagiert? Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht diese Frage anhand von...